Most clinical trials recruit through a handful of hospitals, clinics and research sites. Whether you can join usually depends on living within driving distance of one of them, so the practical question is not “is there a trial for my condition?” but “is there one enrolling near me?” Here is how to answer it.
Start with ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov is the public registry run by the US National Library of Medicine. Sponsors are required to list most US drug and device trials there, and the listing includes every site where a study is enrolling. You can search by condition and location, and filter to studies that are recruiting (ClinicalTrials.gov: How to search).
A few tips make the search much more useful:
- Search by the condition name your doctor uses, then try common synonyms. Listings are not always tagged consistently.
- Set a location and a distance. Without one, you will see studies on other continents.
- Filter to the Recruiting status. Studies marked “Not yet recruiting” have no open sites, and “Enrolling by invitation” studies only take people the researchers select (ClinicalTrials.gov glossary).
- Open the study's Contacts and Locations section. Each site has its own status; a recruiting study can still have a site near you that is closed or not yet open.
Read the eligibility criteria before you call
Every listing has an eligibility section with inclusion and exclusion criteria: age, sex, diagnosis, how long you have had the condition, which treatments you have already tried and which other conditions rule you out. Many sites screen out most callers on these points, so reading them first saves time. The study team makes the final decision after a screening visit; the listing only tells you whether it is worth asking.
Contact the site, not the sponsor
The listing gives a contact name, phone number or email for the study as a whole and often for each site. The site coordinator is the person who can tell you whether they are still enrolling, how soon they could screen you and what the visit schedule looks like. Have your diagnosis, current medications and recent treatments ready. If the listed contact does not respond, the site's research office can usually point you to the right person.
Other ways to find studies
- Your own doctor. Specialists often know which trials are open at nearby academic centers, and a referral can speed up screening.
- Volunteer registries. ResearchMatch is a free, non-profit registry funded by the National Institutes of Health that lets researchers contact you about studies you may fit (ResearchMatch).
- Condition-specific finders. For cancer, the National Cancer Institute runs its own trial search and a free helpline (NCI clinical trials search). Many disease foundations run similar services.
- Academic medical centers. Most list their open studies on their own websites, sometimes before they appear in the registry.
How this site fits in
Trial Eligibility pulls recruiting US studies from ClinicalTrials.gov and groups them by condition and city, with the number of recruiting sites and an approximate distance for each. Enter a ZIP on any page to see the nearest listings. Distances are measured to the center of each site's city, not its street address, so treat them as a guide and confirm with the site. Every listing links back to the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the full details.
Before you enroll anywhere, read what the consent form must tell you and what the study's phase means.
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov, data processed . Recruiting US sites filtered by distance and site status; summaries shortened.